Unit A338 (Shield River North)

What Montana FWP publishes for unit A338 is a boundary, not a pronghorn map. Every place named below sits inside the unit line. Which of them holds animals in your season is for you to find out. The unit lies in Gallatin, Meagher and Park counties.

The lines of the unit: Middle Fork, Sixteenmile Creek and Bridger Mountain Divide

Montana FWP draws unit A338 in Gallatin, Meagher and Park counties with a boundary that runs on Interstate 90 and US Highway 89, and on Middle Fork, Sixteenmile Creek, Bridger Mountain Divide and Flathead Pass, walked corner by corner in its hunting district legal descriptions. It tells you the shape of the unit and nothing about its inhabitants. Those features are what you will check against the map all week, and the divides among them are the ones that matter.

High ground inside the line: Sacagawea Peak, Pomp Peak and Naya Nuki Peak

Named high points inside the unit include Sacagawea Peak at 9,653 feet, Pomp Peak at 9,569 feet, Naya Nuki Peak at 9,542 feet, Black Mountain at 9,270 feet and Sugar Loaf Mountain at 8,579 feet. Several carry a public-land flag in our data, which makes them the first places to try for a view. Pronghorn stay on the open rolling ground and leave the timber alone.

Holding ground: Miller Gulch, Middle Fork Canyon and Battle Ridge Pass

Below them sit Miller Gulch at 5,115 feet, Middle Fork Canyon at 5,049 feet, Battle Ridge Pass at 6,297 feet, Green Canyon at 5,794 feet and Wallrock Basin at 5,772 feet. Those are the basins, parks and bottoms this unit has, and they are what you glass into from above. Reaching the edge of one before light beats reaching its middle at noon.

Montana FWP publishes no pronghorn success figure for unit A338 that we can tie to this unit alone, so we won't quote one. The plan: spot from a vehicle or a rise at distance, then plan a stalk that uses the only cover there is — the curve of the ground.

Glassing from Billie Butte, Goat Mountain and Hatfield Mountain

Take a position on one of Billie Butte (7,794 ft), Goat Mountain (7,732 ft), Hatfield Mountain (7,625 ft) and Bald Ridge (7,557 ft) and be on it before light. Cold air slides downhill in the dark, so keep your scent out of the bowl you mean to watch; expect the thermals to turn uphill an hour after the sun reaches the slope. Work the glass in strips and go back over ground you already covered — animals appear in country you looked at ten minutes ago. On the rut hunts, early-season bucks hold does and can be decoyed where the law allows it.

The way in: Interstate 90 and US Highway 89

We have no road inventory for this unit, so the only routes we can name are the ones Montana FWP draws the boundary with: Interstate 90 and US Highway 89. Those are its edges, not its interior — useful because they are where you leave the pavement, and useless for telling you what the inside is like. Park on the boundary and walk; a unit you can only enter from its rim rewards whoever is willing to leave the truck at the rim.

A first plan from the pins on this page

The map above marks Sacagawea Peak, Sugar Loaf Mountain, Davey Butte and Scab Rock Mountain as places to see from, and Battle Ridge Pass as ground to watch. Each pin is a named feature verified to fall inside the unit line, not a spot anyone has hunted. Take the pair you can reach on one road and treat the rest as a second trip.

What we can't tell you

Some of the ground named above carries no land-status flag we trust, so check ownership on a current layer before you hunt it. We have no pronghorn success figure for this unit that survives checking against Montana FWP's own harvest and hunter counts, and we would rather say so than print a statewide average as though it were measured here.